Winning. That’s the ultimate goal. But it doesn’t just happen. It takes time. It takes experience. It takes self-reflection. And it takes perseverance.

Today’s ALPHA tip is simple but often forgotten – learn from your failures

When things don’t go your way

How often do you ask yourself why something didn’t turn out how you thought it would?

How often do you ask yourself what could you have done differently?

How often do you ask yourself how can you improve?

These are important questions you should always ask yourself if your goal is to be better and win.

But we usually get caught up in the result instead. We get upset we lost. We decide we suck. We believe we aren’t deserving. We slowly give up. We decide its time to find something else we’re good at.

Stop thinking negatively about your current results and start thinking about how you can get better.

The Truth

It takes a lot of hard work to win (at anything) on a consistent basis. But we rarely see this hard work when we watch others winning. We just think they are naturally talented or lucky.

What We Normally See In a Winner

We see the final product when someone is winning.

What We Don’t See

We don’t see the learning process.

We don’t see the failures.

We don’t see the tough times that they endured.

We don’t see the sacrifices.

We don’t see the conversations they’ve had with themselves.

We don’t see the preparation that they’ve done.

We don’t see the self doubt.

We don’t see the progress.

We don’t see the tough times.

We don’t see the hard work.

We don’t see the adjustments.

We don’t see the minor victories.

We don’t see the perseverance.

We don’t see their support system.

We don’t see their mental toughness when times get hard.

Setbacks Are Not the Final Results

You don’t lose unless you want to. Always remember that.

That’s not to say you will get the same opportunities for redemption if you fail at something. But you will have other opportunities to prove yourself.

I talk a lot about making adjustments. And that’s what you need to do when you don’t get the results you want.

Setbacks will tell you what you need to work on.

Setbacks will tell you where you have weaknesses.

Setbacks will tell you where you need to make adjustments.

Not all setbacks are failures. Sometimes you try something new and it doesn’t work out how you want it to. Don’t give up just yet. Find out what works and what doesn’t and adjust accordingly.

Make Adjustments

You should never take a loss or setback at face value. There is always lessons to be learned from a loss. However, not everyone is smart enough to realize this. Most just accept they lost and move on…and they lose more. But if your goal is to ultimately win, then ask the right questions after a set back and get answers so you can learn from your failures.

Remember, winning is key.

Not everyone knows how to become a winner. One of the best ways to win consistently is to learn why you didn’t win before and make the right adjustments.

So next time things don’t go your way (no matter what it is), learn why so it doesn’t happen again.